Ask HN: What are the cool life hacks for Developer? - <AUTHOR> What are the cool life hacks for Developer, you are applying in day to day life? <comment><USER2> Being a developer is a certified superpower, so it's fair to expect that some of the life hacks unlocked by being a developer are on a life changing scale. Here's my recommendation:

Build a machine that prints money.

Find a problem that regular business computer users are solving with some combination of raw effort and a spreadsheet to keep track. Write an app that accomplishes the same thing, but better, and in a mostly automated fashion, and charge them monthly for access to your tool.

It's a lot of work upfront, but the gains you make each month compound. Most of the customers you sign up this month will still be customers next month and you don't have to resell them. Instead you focus on selling new customers, who themselves will be around the month after that. Eventually, the amount of money the machine prints each month is greater than the effort you're putting into it each month, and you've freed yourself from exchanging time for money.

In terms of life hacks that are particularly attainable for developers specifically, I think starting a SaaS is near the top.

<comment><USER3> How do you discover problems that regular people have?

Especially because what most businesses actually do on a daily basis, and what annoying problems they have, is totally invisible to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have another, totally unrelated to coding (or even computer) passion nearby to your work desk that you can go to in order to reboot your brain from time to time.

I have my collection of guitars behind my work desk, and every time I am waiting for a download or process to run, I force myself to NOT just open another browser tab for Facebook/Youtube or revisit my emails and instead reach for an instrument and take my brain to another place for a short while by playing something or practicing some scales/modes.

I also do this when I start feeling overwhelmed with to-do tasks or debugging tricky code. Forcing my brain to think about something completely different and then coming back prevents burnout for me and makes me come back to problems with a different mindset.

Never mind if it is a musical instrument, your cat, card tricks, painting - whatever. Take a mental break.

<comment><USER5> At one point I was picking up my soprano sax during test runs on a regular basis. Doesn't work so well in an open plan office mind you :)

<comment><USER6> Nothing works very well in an open plan office :-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Go outside.

It's not just important to actually enjoy the life you're trying to hack together, it's also healthier, and if neither of those reasons will convince you, it'll also make you a better programmer: Too many programmers think they need to get in front of a screen to start "programming", when in actuality they're just spending themselves, and responding to what they see. Only _thinking about the problem fully_ will make your programs smaller and faster.

<comment><USER8> Totally agree, and this is party why I hate coding tests for interviews. Writing good code starts with decent understanding of the problem and thought put into the design. Rushing that for some time limit is completely counterproductive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Twenty minutes. [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-first-20-minutes-after- wo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-first-20-minutes-after-work-2014-6) this is amazing.

Elevate your command line game:

autojump [https://github.com/wting/autojump](https://github.com/wting/autojump)

ag [https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher](https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher)

Use zsh and put this in .zshrc [https://gist.github.com/chx/f9509cb2db6595be334ca2404fac8a91](https://gist.github.com/chx/f9509cb2db6595be334ca2404fac8a91)

Now you can jump to directories freely with just j afewcharactersfromthedirname, search their contents with ag super fast and if you ever figured out something on the command line, you can recall it after this. For example, I remember I was searching dangling commits with awk so I do Ctrl+Rgit*awk and there it is. (I posted this particular command to [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21903972/search-for- strin...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21903972/search-for-string-in- dangling-commits-in-git) but that's less relevant to the topic here so I won't repeat here.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Use this perl project called TagTime <[https://github.com/dreeves/TagTime>](https://github.com/dreeves/TagTime>) to track your own time. Description from GitHub: To determine how you spend your time, TagTime literally randomly samples you. At random times it pops up and asks what you're doing right at that moment. You answer with tags.

Use Beeminder <beeminder.com>, a commitment device with a sting. Make a commitment, and give them a price (in USD) for failing to meet that commitment. They take your money if you don't do what you said you'd do. They have APIs for many services such as RescueTime and TagTime, and an Android app.

Note: If you're the kind of smart person who always finds a way out of doing the things you claim to care about, then if these two tools don't get you to do those things, you'll at least think deeply about, and know if you _really_ cared about them.

You either get _value_ (success in the things you care about), or _information_ (learn what you don't care about, that you thought you cared about). Then you can use the _value of that information_ to reorder your preferences in an optimal way.

<comment><USER11> Beeminder sounds like a great idea, but there's something stopping me from using it. Every time I try to set a new goal on Beeminder just before I set the dollar amount I hear myself say "this is really stupid" and promptly cancel.

I know that if I feel guilty about paying those $5 per transgression I can just lie to the app, which makes the whole thing pointless.

I understand that the whole idea is to be honest to yourself. But because I have been frugal/cheap my entire life, it feels stupid to waste $5 when I could easily avoid it.

<comment><USER12> (I'm a Beeminder cofounder) This is good feedback; thank you! We're mostly ok with targeting the particular psychology that this kind of thing works for (our very self-serving characterization thereof: [http://blog.beeminder.com/typebee](http://blog.beeminder.com/typebee) ) but what about adding enough social accountability that you wouldn't cheat? We don't have many social features but you can just point some friends/family at the url of your Beeminder graph.

Or maybe a better answer is to automate the data entry (we have dozens of integrations -- GitHub, Trello, Fitbit, RescueTime, etc) so that you'd have to do more than lie to the app. With enough effort you could still cheat, of course.

Would love to hear if this is overcomeable or a dealbreaker!

<comment><USER11> Thank you for your reply.

I think social accountability would only work if (1) someone else could tell whether I'm cheating (that's not happening in a personal project) and (2) cares enough to check my graph.

Maybe my cheapness trumps my integrity. Or more positively, I reframe the meaning of the price: what does $5 buy me in Beeminder? an accurate data point. Is $5 worth an accurate data point? depends on what I'm planning on doing with the data later. And because I don't know what I want to do with the data, an accurate data point doesn't seem very valuable.

That's really unfair, though. I know that losing those $5 eventually will coax me into complying, but my inner Hyde will convince me to lie. Sigh.

I guess I just don't fall into the target niche (although it really looks like I do—except for the cheapness-trumping-integrity issue).

<comment><USER13> It's not just $5 for an accurate data point; it's $5 to convince yourself that the commitment to the goal is really real. Betting for free is very different to betting for real money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Haven't really got some myself, but I read this article a while a go [https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-scripts](https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker- scripts). This guy's script to make coffee is pure genious ;-)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the link! I've seen this before but couldn't remember where!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Use a clipboard manager. I wish I'd started this a lot earlier in life. The amount of times you need the second last thing you copied is surprising. I went through a few before I settled on Ditto, which works over remote desktop too.

<comment><USER17> ArsClip[1] for Windows is a fantastic free tool to track clipboard history.

[1] [http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/97/](http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/97/)

<comment><USER16> That was one of the first I tried, but I think it didn't work across RDP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Automate your job. I'm steadily building tools that make my job easier and thus me more efficient. I have a nice django app scaffolding generator that makes writing code quicker. I just need to add the model fields and the logic to the views. Everything else is mostly generated. In fact, I'm moving towards automating a lot of the code I write. Less strain on my hands.

<comment><USER19> Would you mind sharing the github repo?

<comment><USER18> I'm in the process of automating some tools. They should be out soon. I'll make sure to do a Show HN post for people like you who are interested. :)

<comment><USER19> Please let me know :) I'd love to see it and play around with those tools, they'll cut my work time tremendously. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> AutoHotKey: if you're on windows like me (and starting to feel in the minority on here), this is a must. I've been evangelising AHK for the last 7 years at least, to anyone who will listen. It has saved me days of my life in accumulated time. Here are a few samples of things from my main script which I use daily

        CTRL+@ - paste my email address. saves buckets of time logging into things, signing up to things etc

        ]t - paste date-time in the format 2016-08-12 09:53
        ]d - paste date in the format Friday, August 12, 2016

        #ho - open windows hosts file in notepad

        ALT+MOUSEWHEEL - page up, down with each movement

        F11 - switch to thumbnail view in explorer
        SHIFT-F11 - switch to detail view in explorer

I also have a universal autocorrect script which I've filled with common typos so I can't type 'pulbic', 'widnows', 'anywya' etc (had to disable the script to type those in here)

On top of this, an autocomplete / intellisense script for html / js dev.

Chocolatey: Apt-get for windows. If you ever need to install anything, you can open a web-browser, google the thing you want, open the page, find the installer, download it, open explorer, find the exe, run it, step through the options and get on with your day. OR, if you have Chocolatey installed you can just open powershell and type "choco install vlc" or whatever it is, silently.

The best feature of choco is that you can chain things together. You can write a script that installs everything you need in life, and have a new machine up and running in no-time.

Synergy+: If you use more than one machine, you can share the mouse, keyboard and clipboard - even across operating systems. Put the two screens side by side, configure, and they might aswell be one machine with two monitors.

<comment><USER20> Love Chocolatey, also Synergy+ is awesome, especially since it's cross platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Automation. My number one thing might be learning to use multiple cursors in Sublime, I probably jump into it 10 times a day to psuedo-automate text editing. I wrote of one example here: [http://jontelang.com/blog/2016/06/22/sublime- efficiency.html](http://jontelang.com/blog/2016/06/22/sublime-efficiency.html)

Another thing is, also automation, to use Hazel to automatically keep my temp files manageable. Basically, when I file is older than X days, move it to a "need review" folder. This mean that there is a steady but very very manageable flow of files to delete or move to their correct location. I also wrote about it here: [http://jontelang.com/blog/2015/08/17/hazel-is- great.html](http://jontelang.com/blog/2015/08/17/hazel-is-great.html). My Downloads folder have not been 1000s of files since I started with this.

<comment><USER22> Yes! I use a similar hazel workflow for screenshots. I save all Screenshots to ~/Pictures/Screenshots Screenshots older than 1 days get moved into a ./.old directory Screenshots older than 1 week in that backup directory get deleted.

Workflow: [http://jmp.sh/QAEQSep](http://jmp.sh/QAEQSep)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Learn 1 new thing. Talk more with girlfriend or family. Help 1 guy who is younger. Answer 1 question on Stackoverflow/Quora. Blog 1 short article. Try to code a little better. Read a chapter in a book. Think about what we did today, how to improve tomorrow => Life is happiness, follow our heart and live better every day

</comment><comment><USER24> Start asking questions in Stack Overflow. I wish I started doing this years ago. I used to be just a non participating reader for a long time. Once I got the taste of it, I ask questions frequently now. If you are stuck with an issue for over 2 hrs, ask in SO. There are so many knowledgeable people who will guide you to in the right path and save you hours/days! The best part is you'll get a response when you are back after coffee or max on the next day morning when I come to work. I've started trying the same thing in HN as well lately :) .

<comment><USER25> Well, I don't have similar experiences with SO. Sometimes I feel that easy questions are being answered very quickly by many people because everyone wants to get reputation points quickly, but difficult questions are often left unanswered forever as they require a lot of effort and don't bring as much reputation to the answerer (as their potential audience is not so wide).

<comment><USER26> That's what the bounties are for.

<comment><USER24> Yes for questions with very less audience, you can offer a a bounty after a limited duration (3 days if I remember). You will have to give away your points as bounty. If you do not have enough points to give away, sign-up on other Stack Overflow affiliate sites that give you 100 point for every sign- up. And give it out as bounty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nobody mentions 'meet women' [1]. Maybe too simple but from my perspective an important part in this equation.

Meeting women is a bit like doing sales. it's more of an outgoing activity and being extrovert. So rather the contrary of coding. This is refreshing, gives me balance and a nice change to my day to day life as a coder.

[1] For the sake of verbal simplicity, I use the term 'women' for people of the opposite gender or the gender you are into. And also for the sake of simplicity and decency, I use 'meet' for all kind of interactions.

<comment><USER16> or 'meet men', if you happen to BE a woman, and / or are not into women.

While I appreciate that finding a partner in life is very important, I don't know if it really falls under the umbrella of "developer life hack".

<comment><USER28> What they are saying doesn't have anything to do with romance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Use DuckDuckGo as your default search engine. It answers your code questions inline! It seems to do this by scraping the first accepted answer from the first stackoverflow post match to your query.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you're not already, use browser shortcuts when you know where you want to go.

A few weeks ago I read about an American civilian pilot who was out on a training flight and by chance ran into the Japanese air fleet over Pearl Harbour - becoming one of the first Americans to learn of the imminent attack. I don't remember any details beyond that. If I wanted to read about that pilot on wikipedia, I guess I could navigate to Google.com, enter some relevant search terms, scroll through the results until I find one from Wikipedia that looks right, click on on, read it, see if it's the correct one, etc.

But because I search for wikipedia articles about stuff all the time, I have a chrome shortcut set up that does a Google "I'm feeling lucky" search with "inurl:en.wikipedia" appended to it, so I just type in my browser bar

        w civilian pilot first to see japanese air fleet

and hit enter, and it takes me straight to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Fort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Fort)

Once you get used to going straight to where you want to go, using the "search and choose" method becomes painfully frustrating

Edit: to be more clear, I have a chrome "custom search engine" set up with the keyword "w" and url:

        http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=inurl:en.wikipedia %s&btnI=745

this obviously routes your wikipedia navigation through google, which some people may have a privacy issue with, but I don't when it's something I would search google for anyway

<comment><USER30> Interesting idea. Also, DuckDuckGo can do the same:

      https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%21ducky+inurl%3Aen.wikipedia+%s

I also use Google's "I'm feeling lucky" as my default search so I can type e.g. "mdn array" to look up the JS array docs quickly. I used to use DuckDuckGo's version but the results were unfortunately too inaccurate.

<comment><USER31> Someone on HN mentioned (or even built) [http://mdn.io](http://mdn.io) for that, so you can just type mdn.io/array into the address bar and it takes you straight to the right JS docs page.

Bonus: works in every browser or environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Having worked mostly on refactoring projects in the last few years, I've learned that too many projects end up in the gutter because "that's just the way it is" was the mindset of too many developers working on them when they faced resistance like tight deadlines or faced with spaghetti code they didn't want to deal with.

Applying to real-life, this means making excuses for goals or habits you want to achieve, instead of finding clever solutions to meet them.

Example: you want to develop a habit of listening to podcasts or audiobooks. But excuses like "I don't have a commute with dead time to listen to them" or "I can't focus if I listen to while I work" pop up. You could just say to yourself "that's just the way it is" and not bother developing the habit. Or you can push through the resistance, get creative and figure out other ways to make the time for the habit. Personally as I don't have a commute to work and can't listen while I work, I listen in pockets of time like when I'm in the shower or going in-between meetings.

</comment><comment><USER33> I do love bushcraft! I'm especially passionated with fire-starting techniques and adore to practice them in the woods, but when i can't go outside i watch a lot of youtube related videos.

I had also started a small website ([http://bushcraftvideos.woodsandrocks.com/](http://bushcraftvideos.woodsandrocks.com/)) to "collect" the best of them a few months ago but i'm facing a "break" due to work and personal commitments.

Starting a fire (small and safely) in the nature using a knife and a firesteel is an inspirational experience!

</comment><comment><USER34> Use Workflowy to manage everything in your life that needs to be in a list ([https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/))

If you are on Chrome, use Tabs Outliner to manage your tabs ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl?hl=en))

<comment><USER16> Workflowy is a great tool, but I had to give it up because I spent half my day curating lists instead of working ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Automate! I use LinqPad (.net,c#) to write small tools that automate daily tasks or help me looking up information that I need more than three times a week.

</comment><comment><USER36> cool</comment>


Apple's first foray into wearable technology is called the Apple Watch - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2014/09/09/its-finally-here-apples-first-foray-into-wearable-technology-is-called-the-apple-watch/

<comment><USER2> what do you know... it looks exactly like all the other smart watches.

<comment><AUTHOR> I liked the tapping your wrist part when you are using map. It's pretty cool.

<comment><USER2> I wonder if they called it "Apple Watch" instead of the expected "iWatch" just because everyone was already assuming the name?

It doesn't seem to fit in with their line of products, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch? (and yes i'm aware of Apple TV, but nobody uses that)</comment></comment></comment>


CIA faulted for choosing Amazon cloud over IBM - <AUTHOR> http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/it-pro/cloud/cia-faulted-for-choosing-amazon-cloud-over-ibm-20130620-2okb7.html

<comment><USER2> "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" ;)

Edit: Sorry, couldn't resist. Here's a little more meat for the comment: [http://corporatevisions.com/blog/2007/06/11/no-one-ever- got-...](http://corporatevisions.com/blog/2007/06/11/no-one-ever-got-fired- for-buying-ibm/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This has nothing to do with prices or wrongful chosen clouds. This has everything to do with Amazon encroaching on IBMs old business with the government.

Boeing did the same thing and used the same excuse when they didn't want Airbus coming into the United States and encroaching on its territory.

Mark my works. IBM will win because they have deep pockets with the politicians. That's who will decide this fate, not the CIA.

Humble ex employee of Northrop Grumman on the front line of the Airbus situation.

<comment><USER4> Wait what's going on with the airbus situation?

It sounds analogous to what spaceX will be up against in some coming years with US and European space companies / governments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, seriously. If IBM is good at one thing, it's selling solutions to entities antagonistic to their citizens [1].

[1] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II)

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, if anyone at GAO should happen to ask, I'd pick Amazon over IBM for a cloud solution on technical merits too.

</comment><comment><USER7> For those who don't live in Brisbane. The brisbane times is a free paper put in peoples letter boxes, best known for it's local restaurant reviews and fashion. I wouldn't take it's views on overseas IT procurement very seriously :-)

</comment><comment><USER8> If the price is the primary sticking point in this, I don't see why it's an issue. Clearly there are several more factors involved in this project, otherwise I could step in and quote $1m less than IBM and be considered equally viable.

<comment><USER9> Actually, I believe this is how many public entities award contracts. My friend worked for the parks department in a major US city and when they needed to build something, the lowest bidder got the contract automatically as long as they were qualified/approved regardless of whether or not they were as competent as other vendors.

<comment><USER10> Right, and the procurers write the contract to require features that are oddly specific to the preferred vendor's operation, to avoid undercuts by competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Even if the Amazon service was more expensive, there is more to choosing a service than price. Assuming Amazon's service is a carbon copy clone of their AWS services, then the decision is a no brain so long as the prices are at least in the same ballpark. AFAICT IBM is going to create a custom solution for the USG, which carries much greater operational risk relative to a clone of AWS. Furthermore, all the community, tutorials and open source software that already exists in the AWS ecosystem is a massive asset that is very difficult to price a a major contributor to the value Amazon will provide the USG.</comment>


Show HN: Key&Pad. A Web Audio Synthesizer/XY-Pad Built with React.js and Redux - <AUTHOR> http://keyandpad.com/ <comment><USER2> Ridiculously amazing! I've worked on stuff like this before but had a problem where the keyboard isn't pressure sensitive so I was going to build a microphone tool that would match vibration with stroke intensity. However, you solved this with the wobble pad - quite brilliant (although I don't think you should have to click down). Awesome tool. Very excited about this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really nice work. I love the attention to detail. The anonymous storage is great, but it'd be cool to provide a link so we can share our sessions (or specific parts of our sessions) with other people</comment>


NSA and GCHQ agents 'leak Tor bugs', alleges developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28886462

<comment><USER2> He can't attribute the bugfixes, but he can obviously identify which ones they are. He's made an extraordinary claim. Let's see some data. I'd sure like to know which Tor bugs he thinks NSA leaked him.

<comment><USER3> I think it would be amusing if these "sympathetic NSA agent tipoffs" are actually tipoffs of bugs they've seen utilized by Iranian, Russian, etc. intelligence agencies and would put activists friendly to American values at risk, but can't be revealed publically since that would reveal those ever- popular intelligence "sources and methods" of the NSA, or even the U.S. Intelligence Community at large.

We already know that Tor is first and foremost a scheme to enable U.S. covert and clandestine operations, so it wouldn't be that surprising to see the USG trying to fine tune the balance of Tor security to be breakable against bugs only they possess while ironclad against vulnerabilities known to the rest of the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> Mr Lewman said that his organisation received tips from security agency sources on "probably [a]monthly" basis about bugs and design issues that potentially could compromise the service._

 _> However, he acknowledged that because of the way the Tor Project received such information, he could not prove who had sent it._

 _> "It's a hunch," he said._

<comment><USER5> Exactly. He just made a claim that can't be disproved, in fact won't even be denied, but which he also doesn't need to present any evidence for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would make sense, because I expect that they use Tor a great deal themselves.

Perhaps they only anonymously report the bugs that they detect someone else potentially exploiting? I'm sure they would try to maintain their ability to try and break the protocol, but perhaps if they think some other (non five- eyes intelligence) actor has discovered the vulnerability then they report it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hundreds of millions of people rely on Tor? That's at a minimum like 10% of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER7> Please do not editorialize article titles. That is against the site guidelines.

(Edit: The submitted title was "NSA, GCHQ agents deliberately undermining Tor surveillance efforts by NSA, GCHQ". Was in a rush and forgot to mention it earlier.)

</comment><comment><USER8> With a name like "National Security Agency," you'd think that filing bugs would be part their official duties in securing the nation.

<comment><USER9> It is.

<comment><USER10> They don't seem to be doing their job very well, then, if President Obama had to 'reaffirm' it:

[http://www.wired.com/2014/04/obama-zero- day/](http://www.wired.com/2014/04/obama-zero-day/)

<comment><USER3> There are bugfixes in the x.org code based from a "@tycho.nsa.gov" developer that might even be from the Bush 43 Administration...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should You Be Allowed to Invest in a Lawsuit? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/magazine/should-you-be-allowed-to-invest-in-a-lawsuit.html <comment><USER2> Champerty!

Champerty is the (largely defunct) rule against funding someone else's lawsuit. I always thought that was a funny word. Champerty. But TIL that it comes from the fact that in "England, litigants could hire 'champions' to represent them in 'trial by battle.' By the late 13th century, these strongmen were being compared to prostitutes, and their prevalence hastened the movement of dispute resolution to the courtroom. During the Middle Ages, this concept of 'champerty' — assisting another person's lawsuit in exchange for a share of the proceeds — emerged as part of the larger ecclesiastical taboo against usury."

<comment><USER3> a taboo against usury - pity it didn't last...

<comment><USER4> What? Most states have usury laws right now [1], as do plenty of places outside the US.

[1] [http://www.alqlist.com/interestratesummary.html](http://www.alqlist.com/interestratesummary.html)

<comment><USER5> And most of them have loopholes big enough to drive a truck through. (See payday loans, title loans, hard money loans, merchant cash advance, etc., etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the concern with investing in lawsuits should be focused on secondary motives. Lawsuits with lots of investors will have attorneys with secondary motives, such as keeping the case active as long as possible to continue to attract more investors, rather than resolve it. Perpetual cases could bog down courts in never-ending lawsuits and countersuit challenges, a legal version of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Do lawsuit claimants have a right to consume unbounded judicial time and public money (to pay for judical staff, the courts)? Legal cases stuck in court for years consume time and energy that could be directed at resolving other legal challenges. Time spent in court is ultimately a tax on the public, regardless of the outcome.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't such behavior be considered unethical and possibly grounds for disbarment? After all, that's definitely not in the interests of the client.

<comment><USER8> You'd think but there are issues like this today and it's difficult to prove depending on the circumstances (at least prove to the point where they can get in trouble with the bar).

Anecdotally when my father was going through his divorce his lawyer told him not to take the settlement with his now ex-wife and his lawyer promised she could get him better terms and an expedited divorce and would only need to go to one court appearance.

Two additional retainers later and she told my father he had to settle for what was offered at the court house which was a worse settlement and that she event told him she didn't feel comfortable negotiating beyond what was offered because it was "a great deal". I have a hard time believing she had my father's best interests in mind and just kept the case going for a bit longer.

I would expect a system like this would exacerbate this type of behavior.

<comment><USER9> I know of one long running case concerning pensions (British Telecom Section A) that was dragged out for well over a decade - as the longer it went on more pensioners would have died so reducing the cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes of course you should. This is no different than a lawyer taking a case on contingency. It provides people without the means to hire a legal team a way to take on more well-financed opponents.

While abuse of the legal system is certainly a problem, the way to solve it is not limit financing. That only increases economic inequality. It's like saying we can solve the SF housing crisis by banning mortgages.

<comment><USER11> Didn't Microsoft do this with SCO vs Linux though? In that case, it was big incumbent interested in squashing a scrappy start-up disrupting the industry.

In a case like that, it seems like a tool to perpetuate economic inequality.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but how do you stop that? Isn't any investment in a company involved in litigation implicitly an investment in the litigation? (Or at least a bet that the litigation isn't material to their business.)

The whole SCO vs IBM case was pretty unscrupulous, sleazy, and opportunistic, I agree. I'm not arguing that I have the solution to stop abuses like this. I'm saying that limiting financing is not it.

<comment><USER12> > Yes, but how do you stop that?

Not by limiting financing, but by recognizing and shutting down barratry and stunts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My gut tells me that this is bad. However, intellectually I know that our court system is heavily skewed towards people and organizations with lots of money. So if this is a tool to help level the playing field, I'm all for it. If this swamps the courts, all the better, because that will force legislators to act, which will then cause a debate, which will be useful to society.

<comment><USER14> "If this swamps the courts, all the better, because that will force legislators to act, which will then cause a debate, which will be useful to society."

Considering the amount of problems that currently exist and that forced nobody to do much, I don't think the "if <bad thing>, then <debate> and <better society>" idea is a particularly good bet.

<comment><USER15> It's akin to the originally Marxist notion of "heightening the contradictions".

[http://acceleratethecontradictions.blogspot.com/2010/04/acce...](http://acceleratethecontradictions.blogspot.com/2010/04/accelerate- contradictions-notes-towards.html)

The theory is that some system is inherently bad or broken but people in general don't quite realize it, so if it gets worse it will be more obviously bad and then they'll then actually deal with it. Although sometimes this kind of behavior does happen (for example, someone choosing to go to a doctor only after an illness takes a serious turn for the worse), it seems like a risky theory of social change.

Maybe the powers or institutions you oppose are more entrenched or more adaptable than you expect, or maybe the public is less sympathetic to your analysis of the situation than you expect, or less motivated or more defeatist.

<comment><USER16> "it seems like a risky theory of social change."

It implicitly and falsely assumes that everybody will agree on what the solution is. In the presence of differences brought on not merely by "false consciousness" but by legitimate differences in opinions and desires, it fails the basic Kantian imperative to not do something that breaks society if everybody does it, because it means that everybody who disagrees with some policy, which is always somebody, should try to break things, rather than fix things. In the local vernacular, this "scales poorly".

(I am really tempted to say that Marxists are prone to this, but it would be an over-specific adjective. Truth is, almost everybody "knows" that deep down, everybody else is secretly really like them, and it's just a lack of knowledge or external influence that leads to apparently disagreements. However, the evidence overwhelmingly contradicts this belief. Even in the presence of hostile external actions or lack of knowledge, well, how do you know that _you_ are not the one lacking knowledge or subject to external influence? And many people's value systems legitimately differ.)

<comment><USER17> _Truth is, almost everybody "knows" that deep down, everybody else is secretly really like them, and it's just a lack of knowledge or external influence that leads to apparently disagreements._

That's actually the liberal (in the US sense)/Left conceit, than man is very malleable, that simply by supplying the correct knowledge and/or external influence (AKA environment in the non-strictly biological sense) can be changed. In practice, at the extreme, those who refuse to be changed end up in a forced labor camp if they're lucky.

The position of the right was well expressed by one of my favorite history professors, who said to my and my fellow STEM students' great applause that "Original sin is an empirical observation."

As you say, "the evidence overwhelmingly contradicts this belief."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Consider that many civil legal disagreements end in a settlement because one or both of the parties cannot afford the time and the stress of a legal battle. In that case a third party who pledges support to either of them might easily influence the settlement agreement.

Consider this very realistic scenario: Two parties jointly own a piece of real estate. One of the parties wants to sell the property but the other party does not, because the market is not prime for it. They also cannot afford to buy the others share themselves. So they have a legal disagreement. This will most likely end in settlement as none of them wants to actually go to court. Now a property developer comes in and pledges to fund the guy who wants to sell. That skews their settlement agreement in favour of him and the other guy is forced to sell (to the property developer obviously) at below market value.

<comment><USER19> > the other guy is forced to sell (to the property developer obviously) at > below market value.

Why is he forced to sell at below market value? I'm not experienced at joint ownership of real estate, but I would assume that if you own real estate jointly with other partners, and the result of the lawsuit is that you're required to sell, then you can put the property on the market and fetch the current market price from the best available offer.

<comment><USER20> Because the property developer funded the guy who wants to sell, meaning the other party has to fund a legal battle themselves or sell.

<comment><USER19> It sounds like you're saying that the party might owe legal expenses. That's a different issue than the market value of the property.

Edit: I agree it's somewhat ethically murky if the real estate developer, who also wants to buy the property, is funding the partner-who-wants-to-sell's lawsuit. However, I would expect that if that lawsuit is successful, the parties would be required to sell the property, but not necessarily to the real estate developer - rather, they would be required to put it on the market and fetch a fair market price like a normal real estate sale. I don't see why the other partner would be forced to accept less than the highest offer on the property, which might or might not be the developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While in theory, I agree that this could really give underdogs a way to crowd- fund against well funded adversaries, I think in practice, the added obstacle of needing to organize will always give singular entities that are already wealthy the upper hand to jump in with large sums of money and turn the tables. This is exactly what has happened with the Citizens United ruling. In theory, it gives everyone equal chance, but that's assuming that wealth and prosperity and the ability or organize is equal amongst all interested parties. And that is turning out to be very far from the truth.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. A few years back I led a project at a Startup Weekend that was about crowd-sourced legal defense. (LVLR)

[http://sandiego.startupweekend.org/2011/03/08/9-new- startups...](http://sandiego.startupweekend.org/2011/03/08/9-new-startups- launch-at-sw-sd/)

Of course it wasn't a product that was more than a prototype, but I am fully onboard with crowd funding playing a much larger role in the world than it currently does - whether it's down to a) investing, b) getting some sort of other reward/product or c) more directed alternative to typical charity.

What's discussed in the article was one of the ideas my product guy and I bandied about, but it didn't seem plausible at the time... although, when the JOBS act was passed I did feel that maybe it was possible if you could somehow incorporate your lawsuit?

Right now I'm the lead engineer for a crowd-funded charity site and sometime in the not-too-distant future I'd like to return to this.

</comment><comment><USER23> A cause of action (a lawsuit) has always been like a property interest. As such, through an assignment, you can buy and sell it, mortgage it, put a lien on it, and do about everything else you could do with a property interest. I have never heard of anyone selling shares in a cause of action, though I don't see why this would not conform to existing law, assuming you comply with SEC regulation on the sale of securities.

It's an interesting idea. However, the financial crisis of '08 happened in part because wall street innovation allowed for the selling of shares of mortgage portfolios, so I would be cautious where this goes.

The arguments for and against it in the article seem to mirror the arguments regarding a lawyer's contingent fee interest. Some would say contingency fees have done harm to the legal system. In fact, some states limit contingency fee awards in medical malpractice to limit those types of lawsuits. So, if your goal is to limit lawsuits, this kind of arrangement probably would be bad.

<comment><USER24> It might be spectacularly bad judgment, but I really like the idea of creating derivatives based on slicing up tranches of lawsuit results. Okay, that's almost certainly a bad idea. Even if you could model the payouts in Haskell, as we learned earlier today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Good thing we also have the First Amendment.

Citizens United v. FEC -- majority opinion essentially said that money is free speech ("Because spending money is essential to disseminating speech..."). And spending that money to fund litigation seems like a very strong kind of speech, whether or not its motivated by greed (profit).

<comment><USER17> _And spending that money to fund litigation seems like a very strong kind of speech_

Not to me.

Compare to _Citizens United_ , which was about government censorship of core political speech, a video pertaining to a current candidate for office (or even a book, per the government's arguments). It's well established that "commercial speech", e.g. advertisements for products, can be subject to severe regulation (e.g. tobacco and alcohol) that's anathema to political speech.

And this sure sounds more like commercial than political speech; heck, think of all the laws, rules and regulations that pertain to what you can "say" in a lawsuit, in your written pleadings, oral arguments, etc. Even talking to the public about it can be constrained.

<comment><USER26> What does it mean in a one-vote/voice-per-citizen democracy when a small number of people with money can buy _more_ "free speech", allowing them to dominate the political dialog and crowd out dissenting voices who have less money?

To me, that seems to create a political field where citizens of great wealth are "more equal" than citizens with less.

<comment><USER17> My preferred general approach is that the answer to speech you don't like is more speech. Very specifically, large numbers of people can in turn collectively buy their own "free speech" through various forms of non-profits. Right now, compare the 5 million members of the NRA vs. Michael Bloomberg, who is the _only_ person currently putting serious money into gun control.

In a way, that supports your case, in the Colorado, Washington and Oregon wins he's achieved (through non-profits fronts he's established, after Mayors Against Illegal Guns became so notorious for the number of criminal mayors in it). But not generally, nationally the needle hasn't moved aside from Obama and Hillary! publicly calling for the confiscation of the nation's handguns and semi-auto long guns (!).

But our response is not to try to muzzle him, let alone support a law like McCain-Feingold which muzzled the NRA and therefore its 5 million members working in collective action prior to it being spiked by _Citizens United_.

I'll also note that money only gets you a hearing, I simply don't believe that big money can " _dominate the political dialog and crowd out dissenting voices who have less money_ " without concurrent capture of gatekeepers (like the Federal government in the case of McCain-Feingold...). The examples are _legion_ , the latest being ¡Jeb! Bush's total failure to gain any traction outside of big money sources.

(I recently came across an analysis that to win the Presidency, you've got to do well at both getting "big" and "small" money. Hmmm, like Obama did. By that metric, watch Cruz, and of course Trump is a wildcard, not _needing_ either and currently not playing that game at all.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Purchasing lawsuits / judgments is commonplace in bankruptcy. It is considered an asset for the estate. Here's a list of past sales on our site, Inforuptcy.com:

[https://www.inforuptcy.com/marketplace?f[0]=im_taxonomy_vid_...](https://www.inforuptcy.com/marketplace?f\[0\]=im_taxonomy_vid_16:6140&f\[1\]=im_taxonomy_vid_16:6199&f\[2\]=is_deal_expiry:\[*+TO+1445659200\]&search_type=marketplace&keys=claim)

</comment><comment><USER28> This seems like a broken patch to a broken system. To use the main example from the article, Cat would crush Miller if Miller didn't have access to this method of financing their lawsuit, and Miller's lawsuit looks at least plausible, so them being crushed out of hand is a bad outcome. So, it does somewhat fix the problem of smaller litigants being able to go up against larger defendants without just being automatically crushed out of hand.

However, it does seem that there are some obvious failure states for this new system. If venture litigation becomes the norm, then only litigants who are either extremely large themselves or can attract financing will even have a chance of victory. So, the financiers become the de facto arbiters of the judicial system.

To me, the real problem is that the civil justice system is so expensive as to be out of reach for many/most people, or at least putting a limit on how big a size difference the two parties can have. All told, this isn't that different than someone taking out a mortgage to fund a lawsuit, and that is fairly obviously allowed. The fact that someone might need to take a mortgage or seek outside funding in order to seek justice is the problem, not the mortgage or financing itself.

</comment><comment><USER29> No. No. No. Not unless the court can level the playing field by ordering the recipient to disgorge invested funds if the opposing party can prove need. Otherwise well funded litigants will bury cash strapped kitigants in fees.

<comment><USER30> This already happens, routinely. Some libertarians play up the advantages of a "loser pays" system in ameliorating that problem, but AFAICT it just raises the stakes, again to the detriment of the party with less tolerance for losses.

<comment><USER31> Well, yes and no. It makes it less onerous to defend against certain types of lawsuits (patent trolls come to mind). How many times do we hear stories of some "little guy" who is in the right who gets screwed over because s/he was facing years of litigation that would have bankrupted them even if they won the case?

The other major benefit to a loser pays system is that it does raise the stakes - for frivolous lawsuits. Legal action is, in some ways, very cheap in the United States. Making the loser foot the bill is a good way to make corporations and their ilk take a second glance litigation as a tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The arguments against litigation funding are not compelling. In particular, funded lawsuits tend to be much higher quality than contingency ones. Funders are investors. They do due diligence on the merits of the cases because they want to get their money back. And their cost structure doesn't really support funding cases where the hoped-for resolution is a hundred grand in "go away" money. If someone is willing to sink a million dollars or more into a case, that's an indication that it's not frivolous.

<comment><USER33> I think it is extremely unlikely that 'funded lawsuits tend to be much higher quality than contingency ones.' I can imagine them being of slightly higher quality but not much for the simple reason that contingency cases involve attorney's making an investment decision and those attorneys frequently sink millions of dollars into cases and 'want to get their money back.' The only reason one could argue that funded cases may even be of slightly higher quality is that it is harder for the investor to assess the merits of the case than for the lawyers bringing the suit. But even this argument is pretty weak because any such potential investors can hire experts to assess the case.

<comment><USER32> Are you disagreeing with me or agreeing with me? Lawsuits financed by litigation funders are much higher quality than ones where attorneys are working on contingency. Attorneys working contingency have committed time, the opportunity cost of which may or may not be that high. If they can get away with not investing much time, they might be happy with a small nuisance settlement.

A litigation funder, on the other hand, will commit hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars up front. They can hire experts to assess each case, and won't finance a case if they don't think they have a high probability of a significant recovery. And their cost model is such that it makes no sense for them to finance a case hoping for a nuisance settlement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Let's call this 'crowdsuiting'. Oh, wait: somebody has [http://crowdsuit.com/](http://crowdsuit.com/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I find it already unethical for lawyers to take a percentage of the awarded damages, a practice which is fortunately illegal in many European countries.

<comment><USER36> Why do you think that's unethical? Doesn't it give lawyers the incentive to fight for their clients? What if a poor client cannot pay upfront and percentage of winnings is what convinces a lawyer to fight in the first place?

<comment><USER35> Because it gives lawyers a stronger incentive to escalate conflicts, instead of deescalating them, which is not in the interest of society. Lawyering up is a zero-sum game, so the economy is better off if the money in question stays in a productive sector.

Take a divorce, for example. Do you prefer lawyers to have an incentive to say "calm down, I'll talk to the other lawyer, and we will find a fair deal" or "give me 20% and I'll make that bitch suffer"?

Note that a poor client who cannot pay upfront can still agree to pay after they win, just not a percentage of the awarded sum.

<comment><USER33> That does not make sense.

Lawyers who are taking contingency cases have no incentive to 'escalate conflicts.' Their only interest is to make their case and reach a settlement.

Ironically, it is in cases where lawyers are paid hourly that they have an interest to 'escalate conflicts' to draw cases out and keep drawing fees.

<comment><USER37> Escalating conflict may be a way of increasing the perceived uncertainty, cost, and risk to the other party, and thus increasing the likelihood and size of a settlement to make the case go away, so there may be an incentive to escalate conflict with contingency. Its probably less than with hourly fees, and more than with flat-rate fees (which ISTR are occasionally offered by some for some things like simple divorces.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If the right framework can be agreed for keeping cases free of vested interest and bias, I see benefits in this mechanism.

One possible upside is that David-vs-Goliath cases as described here would be the ones most attractive to investors. The more obvious the injustice, the less risky the investment.

</comment><comment><USER39> This will perpetuate a broken system and widen the economic gap as companies start profiting on the demise of the opposition.

It's one thing when someone invests as a form of aid, however, I see this being gamed for profit.

</comment><comment><USER40> The problem is a legal system where the side with money can bury the other. This stuff is just a symptom of that. Stopping one without fixing the other is just a free pass for the powerful.

</comment><comment><USER41> Interestingly, it seems there is already a crowd funding website for litigation:

[https://www.invest4justice.com/](https://www.invest4justice.com/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I think it's perfectly fine to invest in civil lawsuits for a stake in the settlement/awarded money (haven't thought about criminal law but it's probably fine as well). You can invest in insurances which isn't much different from my POV.

For big collective bargaining trials you can already invest in the outcome without the money going towards moving towards the outcome (short/long the company who is bieng sued)

</comment><comment><USER43> Isn't that what an insurance company is? Defendants pool their resources to fight off torts, share the judgements against them.

</comment><comment><USER44> Should lawsuits be open to lobbying and allow corrupt judges to make a lot of money on certain cases?

</comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone else think that this product could use a more professional video?

[https://youtu.be/54_Tb-PiATY](https://youtu.be/54_Tb-PiATY)

</comment><comment><USER46> Wait for it.... he has an idea... and then we'll package them into lawsuit- backed securities!

</comment><comment><USER47> So, reality is about to catch up with Cory Doctorow (Makers) ?

</comment><comment><USER48> VC-backed litigation crowd-funding platforms in 3.. 2.. 1..

</comment><comment><USER49> If I remember correctly, Makers by Cory Doctorow had this as a big plot element

</comment><comment><USER50> Is it an investment? Or more like a gamble, bet, or speculative movement?

<comment><USER51> It seems like many other types of things which are also termed "investments" involve a (significant) element of risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Only if the funds are shared between the two people fighting the lawsuit... In the current market, the entity spending the most money generally wins. This needs to go away first and it can go away if both (or all) entities in a lawsuit have to pool and divide the resources. This should help equalize the ground a little bit.</comment>


Show HN: Product Sense – curated resources to develop your product intuition - <AUTHOR> https://www.productsense.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just launched Product Sense to help new and aspiring product managers and designers build their product sense skills. I've collected bookmarks and links on this topic for years and thought it might be useful to create a space for others to find this content all in one place.</comment>


Prying Eyes Are Watching Airbnb Users as Tenants Fight Back - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-27/prying-eyes-are-watching-airbnb-customers-as-tenants-fight-back <comment><USER2> It would seem that over-regulation is the culprit here.</comment>


First Course in the Theory of Equations [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29785/29785-pdf.pdf <comment><USER2> I remember studying this book 40+ years ago. It was a joy to read.</comment>